I love actors, both my parents were actors, and the work with actors is the most enjoyable part of making a film. It's important that they feel protected and are confident they won't be betrayed. When you create that atmosphere of trust, it's in the bag - the actors will do everything to satisfy you.

I try to get closer to reality, to get close to the contradictions. The cinema world can be a real world rather than a dream world.

A strict form such as mine cannot be achieved through improvisation.

As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody.

Personally, I can't stand violence. In any standard American mainstream movie, there's 20 times more violence than in any one of my films, so I don't know why those directors aren't asked why they're such specialists for violence.

Because in the feudal system of that period at least 80% of people lived in villages, so it's very simple to get a cross-section of society in a single village. You get the microcosm of the social macrocosm.

Classicism becomes avant-garde when everyone else is doing their utmost to develop new stylistic forms. I think it's healthy to return to classical forms.